Fred Kaltenbach

Frederick W. Kaltenbach (born March 29, 1895 in Dubuque , Iowa ; † October 1945, possibly in special camp No. 2 in Buchenwald ) was an American teacher and radio propagandist for Großdeutscher Rundfunk .

Living in the USA

Kaltenbach was the eldest son of a Presbyterian butcher who had immigrated from Germany four years earlier. He grew up in Waterloo . After graduating from high school , he went on a bike tour through Germany with his brother Gustav. In August 1914 both were with the outbreak of war arrested and espionage as suspicious until December recorded. With the help of an Iowa Congressman , the family managed to secure their release.

Kaltenbach then took up a degree at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. He was called the Kaiser because of his friendliness towards Germans and his habitus and was considered a gifted speaker and debater. For financial reasons he also worked as a porter. As part of American war preparations, he was a member of one of the three Grinnell military units and joined the US Army on June 10, 1918 . Due to his education and student military training, he was stationed as a second lieutenant in the army's coastal artillery in Fort Tilden, New York, and resigned after the end of the war in April 1919. Shortly afterwards he became a member of the American Legion and the field artillery reserve in Waterloo, which he remained until 1936.

In 1920 Kaltenbach earned a BA from Iowa Teacher's College , now UNI , in Cedar Falls. After working as a farm surveyor for seven years, he became an American history teacher in Manchester, Iowa. In 1931 he moved to Dubuque Senior High School as a teacher of economics, commercial law and history . He lived in a YMCA building, of which he was local president, studied French at night and graduated from the University of Chicago with a Master of Arts degree in 1939 summer courses .

Promotion and return

In 1933 he was offered a doctorate at a Berlin university and was released for two years. After experiencing the post-war era, hyperinflation, and the effects of the Great Depression in the United States , he was impressed in Germany by the promises made by the Hitler government. “There was unemployment everywhere and in the industrial areas all (workers) were communists , while Jews lived in luxury. Then Hitler came and gave the German people a new lease on life, ”he wrote.

In 1935 Kaltenbach returned to Dubuque and in autumn formed a group of students called the Militant Order of Spartan Knights . Although based on the school mascot, the association still had features of the German Hitler Youth : There were initiation rituals , brown, military-like uniforms and weekend hikes. After a discussion with the American Legion, Kaltenbach resigned as the group's commander and vowed to get well soon. The school board then banned the group and terminated his employment contract in June 1936.

Germany

After his release, Kaltenbach returned to Germany as a freelance writer and translator. He worked for the German shortwave station of the Propaganda Ministry and wrote an extensive monograph entitled “ Self-Determination Dealing with the Controversial Territorial Settlements of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles ” (self-determination and the controversial territorial determinations of the Versailles Treaty of 1919). As a German ultra-nationalist, he became a supporter of the National Socialists .

Towards the end of his studies he married Dorothea Peters in February 1939, who came from a family of old soldiers. She worked as a secretary for one of the aviation journals of the Air Force Supreme Commander Hermann Göring and had contacts with the NSdAP . Kaltenbach, like other Americans ( Mildred Gillars , Otto Koischwitz , Douglas Chandler , Robert Best ), was hired as a radio editor for the USA section of the German shortwave transmitter. It had 250 employees who broadcast 126 hours of propaganda daily in 14 languages ​​over 10 shortwave channels from Zeesen .

At the expense of the Propaganda Department, the couple went on their honeymoon in the United States and stayed there until May 1939. Kaltenbach visited his brothers, who were church workers and high school teachers, and used several opportunities to speak in Rotary clubs and in front of students about National Socialism, the occupation of the Rhineland (1936) and the annexation of Austria in 1938. He stated "that if Germany wants to take over the Polish Corridor and the city of Danzig " . Kaltenbach was openly referred to as an agent , but also received approval. Although planning to spend the summer in Iowa, the couple set out on their homeward journey in preparation for the raid on Poland that began on September 1, 1939.

Propaganda radio

Shortly before the war began, Kaltenbach began broadcasting German radio propaganda for Americans four times a week. By early November 1939, he had talked enough about himself for the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service of the Federal Communications Commission ( FBIS / FCC) to identify him. Kaltenbach himself cleared up his last doubts by pointing out his broadcasts on a postcard to the Waterloo Daily Courier .

The State Department refused a visa extension that was required from April 1940 on, with reference to its activity for a foreign government.

With his mid-west accent on the program " Letters to Iowa ", Kaltenbach addressed this section of the population in particular, as they were considered to be more isolationist than other Americans. He called Winston Churchill a "Roly-poly Windsy" (roughly: chubby cream puff) and Arthur Neville Chamberlain the "Umbrella Man"; the BBC was the "Bullitt-biddle Corporation-Atrocity Manufacturers Unlimited" (mix of bull / bullet-making-up society-unlimited atrocity propaganda production). He urged the audience to join the " British Lion Tamer Club ", which is open to " Far Easterners, Irish, Japanese and all other opponents of British hegemony ". The British soon named him, after Lord Haw-Haw for William Joyce , Lord Hew-Haw . According to US estimates, around 150-300,000 Americans heard the German shortwave transmitter. American newspapers and radio magazines carried program information.

US investigation

In October 1941, FIS / COI Franklin Roosevelt presented a study on the Berlin propaganda radio. Until the American entry into the war on December 11, 1941 , the activities of Kaltenbach and others were not illegal because they were subject to free speech, after which they were considered treason , even if the propagandists had tried to prevent the USA from participating in the war.

In late 1942, J. Edgar Hoover ( FBI ) began an investigation into the case on the instructions of Attorney General Francis Biddle . Kaltenbach's family environment was sounded out, 126 FBIS radio recordings were evaluated and a 500-page file was created. The FBI wrote requests to Berlin disguised as fan mail, which Kaltenbach answered in detail, unsuspectingly.

On June 26, 1943, he and eight other propagandists were charged with treason in the United States. For the purpose of arrest, the defendant's data were sent to the OCI, the Criminal Investigation Corps (CIC) of the 12th Army and the Psychological Warfare Division (PWD / SHAEF). The latter thus added to their own list, which most recently contained, in addition to 45 Britons, 141 Americans suspected of the collaboration .

The BBC reported on the charges. On July 30, 1943, Kaltenbach replied on the radio: "I suppose technically I am guilty of treason, of treason against Roosevelt and his warmongers , but not against the American people."

As a result of the low impact of the propaganda programs, Zeesen no longer broadcast as often. Kaltenbach could still be heard until the beginning of 1945. He also refused to work for months and got asthma and heart problems.

On May 15, 1945, CIC officers went to Kaltenbach's Berlin apartment to arrest him, although the Soviet KGB had already got ahead of them. The Americans requested a transfer. A repatriated prisoner of war declared that he had seen Kaltenbach in the Soviet special camp No. 2 in Buchenwald . In June 1946 the Soviets confirmed that they had him and would soon release him, but later announced that he had died in a prison camp in October 1945 (his name is not included in the special camps' death lists based on Russian records). On April 13, 1948, the US District Court Columbia closed the file.

literature

• Laurie, Clayton D .: Goebbels's Iowan: Frederick W. Kaltenbach and Nazi Short-Wave Radio Broadcasts to America, 1939-1945. Annals of Iowa 53, no.3 (1994). Article online in English
• Edwards, John Carver: Berlin Calling: American Broadcasters In Service To The Third Reich. Praeger. 1991